Loder colored with annoyance and apprehension. Every look, every tone of Lillian's was distasteful to him. No microscope could have revealed her more fully to him than did his own eyesight. But it was not the moment for personal antipathies; there were other interests than his own at stake. With new resolution he returned her glance.
“Then I must still ask my first question, why did you say, 'I thought it would be you?'” His gaze was direct—so direct that it disconcerted her. She laughed a little uneasily.
“Because I knew.”
“How did you know?”
“Because—” she began; then again she laughed. “Because,” she added, quickly, as if moved by a fresh impulse, “Jack Chilcote made it very obvious to any one who was in his morning-room at twelve o'clock today that it would be you and not he who would be found filling his place this afternoon! It's all very well to talk about honor, but when one walks into an empty room and sees a telegram as long as a letter open on a bureau—”
But her sentence was never finished. Loder had heard what he came to hear; any confession she might have to offer was of no moment in his eyes.
“My dear girl,” he broke in, brusquely, “don't trouble! I should make a most unsatisfactory father confessor.” He spoke quickly. His color was still high, but not of annoyance. His suspense was transformed into unpleasant certainty; but the exchange left him surer of himself. His perplexity had dropped to a quiet sense of self-reliance; his paramount desire was for solitude in which to prepare for the task that lay before him; the most congenial task the world possessed—the unravelling of Chilcote's tangled skeins. Looking into Lillian's eyes, he smiled. “Good-bye!” he said, holding out his hand. “I think we've finished—for to-day.”
She slowly extended her fingers. Her expression and attitude were slightly puzzled—a puzzlement that was either spontaneous or singularly well assumed. As their hands touched she smiled again.
“Will you drop in at the 'Arcadian' to-night?” she said. “It's the dramatized version of 'Other Men's Shoes!' The temptation to make you see it was too irresistible—as you know.”
There was a pause while she waited for his answer—her head inclined to one side, her green eyes gleaming.